A new survey this week out from Accenture takes in 6,500 interviews in Australia, Brazil, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK and the US asks about online video usage ‘ with the vast majority of respondents now accessing video over desktops, laptops, Internet-connected TVs and mobile devices. Over half of them called for the ability to store and record content locally, and to be able to view it on multiple devices at their convenience ‘ in particular to record content on the PC and watch it later on the TV. 43% wanted TV catch up, 40% wanted VoD. Tablet computers were only used by 21% . The biggest hurdles to more online video watching was the time required to buffer video (40%); advertising during programming (36%); and the low quality of some online video (35%).
US encoder maker Envivio, said this week that its 4Caster C4 encoders are being used by Prisa TV’s VoD services, the Digital + Videoclub, in Spain, delivering Over The Top with integrated encryption, using adaptive streaming. The system uses Nagravision conditional access.
Warner Music Group has a second round of bidders to buy it out and will take a look at the offers this week says Reuters. So far it has ten bids valuing the business between $2.8 billion and $3 billion. Full or partial bids have been seen from Live Nation; BMG Rights Management, a joint venture of Bertelsmann and private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts; Platinum Equity; Yucapia; individuals Len Blavatnik; Ron Perelman; and Sony .
Gartner reckons that Apple’s iOS will keep 69% of the tablet market this year and still have 47% by 2015. Android will go from 20% reckons Gartner to 39% in 2015. This is a change in predictions with the Google decision not to open up the Honeycomb release meaning the OS will not fragment, but the move will also slow price declines on devices and therefore sales. Gartner says Intel’s MeeGo will actually lose market share from 1.1% this year to 1% in 2015. WebOS will fall from 4% to 3% while Blackberry’s QNX will gain market share from 5.6% to 10%
in 2015. There is a certain pro-American manufacturer feel to these predictions and we feel they are somewhat optimistic for both Apple and RIM.
Smart card specialist Gemalto says that NTT DoCoMo will use its UICC card when it deploys LTE technology in its Xi (read ‘Crossy’) network. The service will cover the major urban centers of Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka, with plans to reach 70% of the Japanese population by March 2015.
Facebook has cut a deal with China’s Baidu, the leading search engine there, for a joint offering targeted at handset based broadband access. The story came from Sohu.com saying that a combined Facebook Baidu web service will not be integrated with Facebook’s international platform, which will make it more flexible than Google was towards the Chinese authorities’ demands over data monitoring. Google almost fell completely out of the Chinese market after it said it would no longer censor search results.
According to Broadband TV News Virgin Media will introduce a new 500 GB TiVo box from mid-May. The first TiVo box had 1 TB of data, which probably made it a little expensive and so far Virgin Media has been slow to give out numbers on its uptake. Rivals have suggested that there are technical difficulties with the TiVo built service. The new box will also be made by Cisco and Broadband TV news says it will have three tuners for cable content, but it is also supposed to take IP delivered content too. The new box will be available to Virgin Media customers for £49.95 and an increase in the customer’s monthly subscription. The previous box had a price tag of £149.95 for existing customers.
US forecaster NSR says that satellite broadband will grow 15% annually over the coming ten years and will generate $9 billion in revenues by 2020, driven primarily by satellite broadband Internet access and VSAT networking to enterprises.
PlayJam, billing itself as the world’s largest TV games network, has cut a deal with LG Electronics to bundle its game service with LG Smart TVs and Blu-ray boxes globally. PlayJam offers casual gaming and will use its existing world-wide billing, CRM and games servers to deliver the games. The PlayJam service will sit alongside entertainment offerings from Netflix, Roxio Cinema Now, Pandora and Vudu.
As expected, Cisco is giving up on its attempt to create a consumer brand and will shut down several of its device businesses as part of a broad reorganization. One of the casualties will be the Flip mobile camcorder. CEO John Chambers said last week, in a company email, that Cisco’s strategy to diversify into almost every business touched by IP networks had confused investors. He signaled a major effort to streamline activities and refocus on key areas of strength, enterprise and carrier networks.
US mobile operator Sprint has extended its old partnership with Rhapsody to unveil an Android based music service, the latest in a long line to try to challenge iTunes. Sprint Music Plus promises subscribers a single point where they can discover and buy tracks, ringtones and ringbacks. Songs are priced between 69 cents and $1.29 and are DRM-free. The platform is powered by digital entertainment provider RealNetworks, with which Sprint has a six-year alliance.
Prague based Kit Digital, public on the US Nasdaq market, has acquired UK based ioko, which has helped the BBC, Sky and various other broadcasters build successful online video presences. It will pay $79.4 million, including future performance-based incentive payments. ioko provides a managed cloud-based platform for multi-screen video delivery over connected IP devices and generates around $54 million a year in revenues.
Blinkx has never been fast to create a business model for what it does, it has always had the policy of creating eyeballs and cashing in on them later. It has now bought ad network, Burst Media and says that it can now deliver the 35 million hours of video that it has indexed into a video search engine, to Burst’s 130 million unique users. Blinkx will pay $30 million for the privilege and will now create contextually relevant video channels for Burst’s network of publishers, effectively aggregating its online video audience for existing US advertisers. The company says that the move will give it video channels which will rival the scale of television networks.